The Mars Expedition

Every clean cut, down-the-middle pop superstar has an alter ego hiding just out of sight. In the case of Bruno Mars, we've gotten glimpses—this is a man, after all, who's already had one high profile drug-possession bust and whose latest global smash-hit single is all about a girl's vagina. But when he picks you up in his car just after midnight in Los Angeles, you never know where he's going to take you next. Chris Heath goes for a ride with pop music's biggest hitmaker

In the beginning—two days before Bruno Mars will pick me up after midnight with a bottle of rum in his hand and a roll of over $3,000 tucked in his pocket—we just talk at his house.

Mars has been living here since last summer. His home is quite simple—"I don't throw lavish parties or nothing like that, I just want a bed and a TV"—but with fancy flourishes. In the driveway is a recent purchase, a gold 1967 Chevy Super Sport Nova. Through a doorway I can see a gleaming metal palm tree. "Brass," he says. "I should have said gold. Shit." No matter. "Isn't that the coolest thing you've ever seen in your life? Doesn't that blow your mind? That's my palm tree." The house sits on a single level near the crest of a hill in Los Angeles with a view of the Valley. "I don't like two stories," he explains. "I like one story. I never grew up with stairs. I like to stick to what I know."

His only visible companion here is his Rottweiler. Mars got Geronimo last April as a puppy. "That was my dream, man. I was, 'Man, I want a dog. I need a dog. A big one.' " And now he has a big dog. "And then they bite and ruin all your furniture and shoes and shit," he says. While Geronimo starts to quietly savage me—taking my left hand, then my wrist, then my forearm in his mouth—Mars and I discuss some songs from his new album, Unorthodox Jukebox. I quickly realize that to get the best out of him, to unlock his most impassioned and pure testimony—and a playfully spiky sense of humor—a little provocation is sometimes required. Okay. If he needs a foil, someone to play the idiot, I can be here for him.

We begin with the recently omnipresent "Locked Out of Heaven," which channels the spirit of early Police into something joyous, idiosyncratic, and utterly contemporary. It is also one of many songs on his new album that are about sex. "It feels good to sing about," he begins. "It feels...sexy. It puts you in a sexy frame of mind. It feels good to pro-ject. Sex is a great party starter."

A pop song about sex is nothing unusual. It is less common for a chart-topping single to be essentially one long hymn of praise and supplication to a vagina.

"Pretty awesome, right?" he says. "The verses to me are what really makes that song: Swimming in your water is something spiritual."

If this still sounds vague in its allusions, when Mars was answering fans' questions online last October, he clarified exactly which body of water he was referring to. "As in da pussay leche," he tweeted.

"I'm a writer, man!" he says when I mention this tweet. "What do you want me to do? It was just a moment. It felt like the right thing to do."

In a fairly direct anatomical way, I say.

"You can't use big words with me. What does anatomical mean?"

He is spelling out, I explain, that the song is about what's between a woman's legs.

"Sure," he says. "In the most beautiful, passionate, sexy way ever."

Some people, I persist relentlessly, might find an extended metaphor that aligns religion and a vagina to be blasphemous.

Mars chooses to take this as something of an affront. "It's like that saying: 'If you think it's racist, then you're racist,' " he protests. "If you think it's blasphemous, then obviously you don't know that it's poetry. You can pick apart all of my songs. A bullet through your brain, man? That's not politically correct." He is referring here to the lyrics—I would...take a bullet straight through my brain—from "Grenade," the high point of his first album, in which he offers a gruesome list of harms he would be prepared to face on behalf of a lover who he now realizes would not reciprocate. "You're not listening to it right if you're picking it apart like that. You know? I can't overthink everything I wrote or worry about that kind of stuff. Hopefully people should know. There's no blasphemy. Or insult to any religion. It's just fucking poetry, whether you believe me or not."

Another of Mars's favorites on the new album, "Gorilla," builds to a chorus in which Mars declares, You and me, baby, making love like gorillas. I bet I can find a few questions he'll find exasperating on this topic.

"It was just painting a picture—some animalistic sex," he says. "Instead of me singing 'You and me having animalistic sex'—which is a terrible lyric."

So what, exactly, is "making love like a gorilla"?

"What does that sound like to you? Come on, you're a grown man. You've been there. Why are you making me feel like I'm the only one in the room? What is this, 1933? We can't talk about this? I'll give you
some videotapes."

So your idea of a perfect encounter—as described in the song—is one where your partner is screaming to you, "Give it to me, baby, give it to me, motherfucker," while the cops who have been attracted by the violent noises the two of you are making are outside trying to get in?

"It definitely sounds awesome. Right? Isn't that what matters? It's an awesome song! I don't know how to tell you that more. You want me to take my clothes off and show you what it's like? Give you examples."

I did spend about four minutes earlier Googling how gorillas actually have sex.

"Is it everything I hope it is?"

No.

"Have you seen them in the dark?"

No. But they have rather boring sex.

"Oh, don't nerd out on me. You know what I was talking about!"

Also, did you know that gorillas have amazingly small penises compared with their size?

"I didn't know that. You're kind of ruining my thought of the song. Let me think it's an awesome song. Next time I write a song, I'll make sure to do all the proper research." He imitates me. "'You know, when you say 'locked out of heaven,' I don't know if they actually have locks...."